Let me set the scene for you. It's the first week of December in New York City. Freakin' brrrrr. It is cold outside, with a capital C. It is the week of the annual lighting of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza. It is also the week Dave and I are in NYC for my radiation treatment.
We were staying at Hope Lodge, which is run by the American Cancer Society. It's like a no-frills hotel for patients of MSKCC who are undergoing treatment. Except, it turns out, there are frills.
One of the big frills is that there are lots of groups (businesses, non-profits, clubs, social groups, etc...) who volunteer to cook and serve dinner to the patients at Hope Lodge so that they don't have to cook for themselves. I could just get lost in that one sentence for many, many paragraphs. People give up their valuable time during what is billed as the most joyful and busiest season of the year to come to a building filled with people who are, among other things, depressed, angry, nauseous, scared, exhausted, homesick, frustrated, unwell, appetite-challenged... you get the idea. These volunteers come to cook. And to serve. Which is such an intimate thing to do for people. Especially for people who are missing home during the holidays. It's very generous of spirit.
OK so dinner! It was Tuesday night, the night before the Rockefeller Tree Lighting, and our Hope Lodge schedule said that dinner would be cooked, served, and provided that night by Dorian's Seafood Market. But not just that. It also indicated that it was a special evening, with an annual tree lighting ceremony. How festive! There was ZERO chance that Dave and I were going to brave the elements (and the crowds) the next night to go to Rockefeller Plaza at 9pm, so this was going to be as close as we came to a tree lighting.
I will add in at this point that I wasn't initially 100% in on going to this dinner. Or any of these dinners. I had a picture in my head not just of what it would be like to sit at dinner with dozens of sick people, but also to have to talk with dozens of sick people. It meant mentally allowing for the fact that I belonged here, with these people. Tough stuff. But it did sound like it could, potentially, be not horrible. How's that for optimism?
Dinner started at 6pm. Dave and I wandered down to the large kitchen/dining area around 5pm just to scope out the situation and found a bustling hive of activity. In the middle of it was Dorian, a petite blond woman in her 40's who was a bundle of energy. She introduced herself and we ended up chatting for a solid fifteen minutes, during which time she told us about the seafood market she owns, how she came to serve this dinner every year for the past dozen years, and what was on the menu for that night. I'm going to concentrate first on what was for dinner, because this was no seat-of-your-pants half-assed effort. This was a gourmet dinner, made with great love by a grateful daughter.
Dorian and her crew, which consisted of her teenage kids and many of their friends as well as the kids' parents, had prepared poached salmon with cucumbers and fresh dill sauce, steamed green beans with butter, two types of green salad (caesar as well as kale-based), homemade rolls, pasta, shrimp with cocktail sauce, and this amazing fresh avocado salad. And dessert--coffee, cookies, and homemade cannoli. This was all freshly prepared. For us. It was beautiful and delicious. Here is a picture of what the poached salmon with cucumbers looked like; the cucumber were sliced paper thin and made to look like scales:
The high school kids took our drink orders (sparkling water? still water? juice? coffee?) and brought us refills. One young woman played Christmas carols on the piano throughout the entire dinner, and seemed genuinely embarrassed when we all clapped for her. The parents generously dished up the food with big smiles and did all of the cleanup with equal enthusiasm.
We spent the evening at a table with Ed and Kelly, who I introduced in an earlier post. For someone who was dreading having to talk to other people during this dinner, I had a great time. We did talk medical stuff, but only for a bit. Then we moved on to where to find great Korean food nearby, what our kids were all up to, what we were looking forward to in the coming year, and at some point the restaurant Hooters came into the conversation, for reasons that now escape me. But I do remember making some sort of "known for their hot breasts as well as their wings" comment and Ed repeatedly telling me how funny I was. When the dessert plate arrived at our table we all tried various cookies and Ed had to convince Kelly to try one of the almond-flavored cookies, which turned out to be an amusing exchange as she resisted and he prodded and we laughed. They were just a typical couple, squabbling over typical things. It made me really happy in that moment, to be able to sit with a few people and have a fun, normal conversation in a place that did not necessarily lend itself to any of that.
After dinner, Dorian told the dining room about her eighty-plus year old mother, who years ago had been diagnosed with stage 4 oral cancer. Memorial Sloan Kettering had treated her. And she now works for Dorian at her fish market, still going strong. This dinner and tree lighting, Dorian told us all, started as her way to give back in gratitude.
Dorian plugged in the lights, the tree lit up, and so did the room. It was like holiday spirit burst its way through a door and filled a room that might have just as easily have locked it out.
It was a lovely evening. I'm so glad we went.
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